CULLMAN — Nearly six months after completion, new statistics show a $14 million Cullman County school system heating and air equipment overhaul is not saving as much money as expected.

The project, handled by Chevron Energy Solutions, included the installation of 235 new HVAC units, as well as energy-efficient lighting, in every county school.

To ensure energy savings, control of the heating and air equipment for the entire system is centralized, and settings must stay within certain parameters to ensure the level of savings to pay for the system are met.

The school board had planned to pay for the equipment with funds to be saved in future utility bills.

Savings are off by approximately $46,000 — or about 10 percent — for the first six months of available data, according to statistics provided by Chevron.

“We need to get to a place where we know we made a good decision, and I don’t think we’re there right now,” board member Steve Freeman said at a meeting earlier in the week to discuss the project. “We were led to believe this was a win-win, and there was no way we could lose.”

Chevron representatives Steve Schulte and Aaron Tarjan said savings are off the mark because some schools are running heating and air conditioning equipment non-stop, while the original projections expected the systems to only run during school hours.

“I know there have been some issues with equipment, but there are some schools that have had to run 24/7, which doesn’t show the savings,” Schulte said. “Those units were expected to run from 6 a.m. until 4 p.m., five days a week.”

Some units are running longer than scheduled because older facilities in the school system take more time and energy to heat or cool, Schulte said.

“You may have a mix of buildings from the 1940s, and some from the 1980s, and the buildings from the 1940s obviously don’t recover as quickly,” he said.

To correct the problem, Schulte said his team plans to split the school facilities into additional zones. This should allow specific rooms and areas to run longer as-needed, as opposed to equipment in an entire building running until one room meets the temperature threshold.

“We’re going to look at splitting that out, and separating those areas that need to run more,” Schulte said. “We’re saying [county schools energy supervisor Roger Hamm’s] hands are tied, and we’re going to be breaking those into more zones.”

Considering Chevron representatives surveyed the various schools before the project began, Freeman asked why this problem wasn’t accounted for in the beginning.

“You knew we had old buildings at the time, that wasn’t a surprise,” he said.

Tarjan said he was not involved with the project when the initial survey was done, and he is not sure why the issue was not noticed until now.

“Finding all of that information is standard practice, and I find it hard to believe that any engineer would not account for those things,” he said.



Savings

When working correctly, the energy project should cut costs in four distinct categories, Schulte said.

The brunt of the savings — 73 percent — should come from the heating and air equipment running on a set schedule. Approximately five percent should be saved in water use, three percent should be saved by mechanical equipment replacement and 20 percent should be saved with energy-efficient lighting.

Since such a vast majority of savings come from equipment run-time, not the equipment itself, school board member Danny Ray questioned why the project was necessary at all.

“Why spend $14 million to have someone come in and tell us to turn our thermostat off?” he said. “We felt the equipment would take care of the savings, and we’re not happy it’s not doing what we were told it would do ... We really hoped we would’ve saved more, but the savings aren’t there, and we probably should have asked all these questions a year and a half ago.”

Schulte countered that without the Chevron equipment, the thermostats and HVAC equipment could not be effectively monitored.

“You couldn’t manage and do that without the energy management system,” he said.

Once the zone tweaks are implemented, Schulte said he believes the next set of statistics should be closer to the projected savings.

“We are going to work to get more zones, and do that on our dime,” he said. “We’re going to work so that, in the future, we’ll meet those standards ... We don’t like delivering this message, and I certainly wish we were $30,000 or $40,000 on the good side.”

As part of the original contract, Chevron has agreed to cover any shortfall between the utility savings and debt services to pay for the project, if the savings fall below expectations.

“Chevron does stand by that guarantee, and we have had to write checks before,” Tarjan said.

If there is a gap when the final tallies for the year are finished around November, Tarjan added an estimated $182,000 in supposed energy savings during the construction period would be factored in, per the contract agreement.

Ray questioned how accurate those savings estimates could be, considering they were taken during the long, hectic construction process.

“There’s no way to see that, as chaotic as construction is,” he said.



A history of delays, issues

Ever since work began on the Chevron project in early 2008, the undertaking has been marred with delays and issues.

Some principals and school personnel complained about the construction process during the summer of 2008, as large holes were left in some buildings for several days — and over weekends — as crews worked to install the large HVAC units.

The project also suffered a five month delay where no work was done in late 2008 and early 2009, as school officials shopped around to various banks looking for the lowest possible interest rate to fund the second half of the $14 million project, which was split into two parts to spread the cost into two fiscal years.

Moving forward, Superintendent Hank Allen said school officials will remain active to ensure the problems are corrected in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re going to press these guys to come up with some alternative plans, and I think they will,” he said. “We just have to find something that fits our school system and facilities.”



‰ Trent Moore can be reached by e-mail at trentm@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 225.